Computer Business Review

RS/6000 OFFERS 32-BIT KICKERS, NC SUPPORT, NO RE-BRANDING

Gearing-up for the introduction of 64-bit Apache- and PowerPC
620-based systems in October, IBM Corp will next week provide some
late-life juice to its 32-bit RS/6000 AIX servers, announcing
higher-performing PowerPC 604e processor options as well as cutting
prices by up to 30% (CI No 3,040). Continuing the transition to
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus architecture IBM is
also replacing another of its Micro Channel Architecture (MCA)
servers with a new PCI bus F50 server. In addition, a new 4.2.1 cut
of its AIX Unix operating system to be bundled with all RS/6000s
will begin to unleash IBM's Network Stations onto the market by
providing limited support for Big Blue's flavor of network
computers, which are built by Network Computing Devices Inc. IBM is
also extending clustering and internet software options on the
RS/6000 boxes, but what's still missing is the long-promised
re-branding of the line that will spare us from the alphabet soup
of naming and numbering schemes it currently uses. It is touting
the new PCI bus RS/6000 Model F50 as the industry's fastest
internet server. With up to four 166MHz PowerPC 604e processors,
the F50 is claimed to deliver 2148 HTTP operations per second in
SPECweb96 benchmarking. The system comes with 128Mb to 3Gb RAM and
is priced from $29,000. It's touted as a replacement for the
four-way MCA G40 unit, though customers are being offered
end-of-life G40 kickers in the form of 187MHz 604e upgrades for
their 112MHz systems. The eight- way 112MHz R40 rack-mount and J40
deskside MCA servers are being offered with 200MHz 604e parts as
the R50 and J50; entry-level prices are reduced to $64,000 and
$54,000 respectively. The PCI bus deskside E20, E30 uniprocessors
and F40 two-way servers will be offered with 233MHz 604e parts. IBM
says F50 will become the first RS/6000 to roll off the AS/400
production line, in June. IBM's Rochester, Minnesota facility will
be manufacturing all RS/6000s formerly built by the Austin, Texas
plant by the end of the year. The new AIX 4.2.1 will provide some
limited support for IBM Network Stations; devices booted from a
particular server will be able to download applications and upload
new data - but only to the server it booted from. IBM will the rev
the software within two months to enable the Network Stations to
upload and download to multiple RS/6000s. AIX 4.2.1 also offers
updated support for NFS, internet mail server, security, system
administration and TCP/IP. A new release of the High Availability
Cluster Multi-Processing to support AIX 4.2.1 includes an
additional HAView component enabling administrators to monitor
HACMP clusters across a network from a single node through Tivoli
TME 10 NetView for AIX. The company expects to get more specific
about its Phoenix clustering APIs shortly, and says that while it
is still evaluating Non Uniform Memory Access technologies such as
S-COMA, it will extend RS/6000 scaling with additional symmetric
multiprocessing technologies through 1998, not with NUMA. It will
also offer a new version of its Internet PowerSolution - an RS/6000
server pre-configured with a raft of internet software. The new
package includes AIX 4.2 - but apparently not 4.2.1 so this isn't a
Network Station server - Lotus Domino 4.5, 20 general business
applications, Netscape Calendar Server version 1, Firewall 3.1 for
AIX, Internet Connection Secure Server 4.2 and Net.Commerce version
2. IBM is saving its workstation kickers until next week to garner
widest possible coverage.